Wash Post: “Obamacare Save My Family!!!!!”

I’m waiting for the opinion piece “Obamacare killed my family when my employer dropped my hours to part time and dropped our coverage”

Obamacare saved my family from financial ruin

House Speaker John Boehner and his tea party friends shut down the U.S. government because of people like me. I am the mother of an insurance hog, someone who could have blown through his lifetime limit of health coverage by the time he was 14. My son has managed to survive despite seemingly insurmountable challenges, and he wears his preexisting condition like a Super Bowl ring.

Good thing this isn’t political. In the first paragraph. Because Boehner and other Americans apparently want to bankrupt her and her family. Anyhow, her son was sadly born with a brain tumor, and Ms. Urbaniak Reid discusses this before moving on to

Mason spent most of eighth grade in the hospital. In the six months he was hospitalized, he spent 65 days in the pediatric intensive care unit. He underwent four brain surgeries. Halfway through his hospitalization, the Affordable Care Act was passed, alleviating lifetime limits on coverage and saving us from the financial abyss. Mason moved to a rehabilitation hospital where he was retaught the most basic skills — sitting up, eating and standing. We faithfully paid the premiums on the employer-sponsored plan through which our family is covered, along with the rest of our bills, thanking God and whoever else would listen for our good fortune to have coverage.

Interestingly, I think we can all empathize or sympathize with their plight. Nor are Conservatives and folks on the right against removing those lifetime limits. I’m not. Nor am I against deeming that people cannot be dropped for getting sick. However, these notions are simply honey poured on top of nasty medicine. Or, better, putting a nice pretzel bun, tomatoes, and catsup on top of a sh*t patty.

The biggest fear for families such as mine is that we will lose our health insurance and be rendered uninsurable because one of us has been sick. The Affordable Care Act does away with dreaded clauses barring preexisting conditions. It also enables us to keep Mason on our insurance until he is 26; then, he will be able to purchase his own coverage on an insurance exchange. At least, that was the plan until last Tuesday, when the government was shut down in protest of such excesses.

Hmm, it seems that the reason people can’t sign up is because Team Obama really truly sucks at rolling out this abomination, not the shutdown.

I don’t want it to seem like I’m making light of the plight of the family, yet, if you put yourself out in the political realm, expect blowback. Lots of families are worried about losing their coverage through their companies as well as their own private plans thanks to Obamacare. They’re worried about losing their doctors, seeing a reduced availability of doctors and medical centers, along with rationing, all of which come with the Exchange plans. Their worried about losing their jobs or seeing their hours cut. Their worried about the economic malaise, caused in part because of the “Affordable” Care Act. Their worried about paying lots of money for the insurance they are required by law to purchase. Even though Obama gave waivers to friendly groups and postponed the employer mandate till after the 2014 midterms.

All the things Ms. Urbaniak Reid likes could have been implemented without destroying our health insurance and care industry, along with the economy. Folks like her want to make it personal. Well, thanks to her belief in the full package of the ACA, her son is doing well, but she is one of the people responsible for making sure people are making less, working less, losing their good insurance, and being long term unemployed.

Read: Wash Post: “Obamacare Save My Family!!!!!” »

Republicans Ready To Give Obama Everything He Wants?

I’ll admit, I had some concerns with the whole shutdown plan. First, because there was no way the Democrat controlled Senate would defund the “Affordable” Care Act, and on the .001% chance that happened, Obama wouldn’t sign it. Nor would they delay the individual mandate. Nor make substantive changes that fix the issues that are destroying our economy, causing people to lose their health insurance, and cause Obamacare premiums to skyrocket. Democrats do not want to listen to the American people who hate Obamacare, and really do not care about Americans except as serfs.

I was concerned that they had no plan for when the “A”CA launched and failed. They could have come out on 10/2 and said “well, Ocare is collapsing and is as bad as we thought, here’s a CR that has cuts, we’re moving on.” I was concerned that the GOP had no plan to move from the “A”CA to serious cuts. And, with so many, let’s call them …. “squishy jerks”, ones like John McCain and Peter King, among others, I was concerned that something like this would happen

(Breitbart) House Republicans have sent the White House a revised proposal to lift the debt ceiling for six weeks, as well as reopen government through December 15th, which was their original spending proposal before the partial shutdown. The revised GOP plan reflects the demands Obama made in a meeting with House GOP Leaders on Thursday. It also reflects the unwillingness of the DC GOP to face a fiscal showdown with Democrats.

Aside from reopening the government and agreeing to raise America’s debt over the current $16.7 trillion limit, the Republicans made several other concession to President Obama and the Democrats. One such example is that Obamacare would receive funding. The Republicans would get to take out a portion of the president’s signature legislation, but the law would substantially remain intact. The AP reports:

Under a proposal she and other GOP senators have been developing, a medical device tax that helps finance the health care law would be repealed, and millions of individuals eligible for subsidies to purchase health insurance under the program would be subject to stronger income verification.

This has obviously not gone through, and is simply from reports. But, can’t you see this as what the GOP squishes are proposing? Doesn’t it feel like something the GOP would do? Instead of attacking Obama for Shutdown Theater, for closing open air monuments, for the cones on roads, etc, for his intransigence, they seem to be willing to compromise, ie, give in for a few bones sucked dry of meat and marrow

In exchange for meeting, at least momentarily, all of Obama’s demands, the House GOP is seeking a “framework” for future negotiations on addressing longer-term budget issues. These negotiations would be led for the Republicans by Rep. Paul Ryan, who is likely to seek a “grand bargain” resolving the nation’s structural budget problems.

Anyone who believes Obama and the Democrats will negotiate, even in bad faith, afterwards, please go sit in the corner with a dunce hat. Remember, Senate Democrats said they would pass an actual budget, something they haven’t done since Obama took office, as part of the debt deal earlier in this same year.

Crossed at Right Wing News and Stop The ACLU.

Read: Republicans Ready To Give Obama Everything He Wants? »

Schoolkids Won’t Know What Standing Trees Look Like

Won’t someone please think of the kids?

Winter has arrived in southern Germany with the first heavy snowfall hitting Bavaria on Thursday night and Friday morning.

Trees which have collapsed under the weight of the snow are also posing a danger for drivers and pedestrians. On one stretch of road out of Garmisch-Partenkirchen, 15 trees blocked traffic.

Unfortunately, the kids destroyed the non-replaceable frozen precipitation caused by someone, probably you, refusing to unplug all your Electrics, by making snowmen, rendrering it unusable for drinking.

Read: Schoolkids Won’t Know What Standing Trees Look Like »

If All You See…

…is a bad weather creating baby which No One Else should be allowed to have, especially those brown people in developing nations, you might just be a Warmist

The blog of the day is The Strata-Sphere, with post on prayer and visiting Barrycaded areas.

Read: If All You See… »

NY Times: Climate Models Have Problems

The hell you say! This is the NY Times discussing the (bat guano crazy) report of the next tipping point (which I mentioned yesterday)

The research comes with caveats. It is based on climate models, huge computer programs that attempt to reproduce the physics of the climate system and forecast the future response to greenhouse gases. Though they are the best tools available, these models contain acknowledged problems, and no one is sure how accurate they will prove to be at peering many decades ahead.

This comes via Donna Laframboise, who calls this the quote of the year, and notes

If every news story written about climate change since the 1980s had contained that single paragraph, we’d have made smarter decisions over the past quarter century. We’d have had billions more dollars available to spend on sensible measures – such as saving the hundreds of thousands of African kids who still perish annually from malaria.

She also provides this handy dandy warning label, which should be slapped on every Warmist article, just like with packs of cigarettes

That part about peering ahead is also pretty darned important, because the vast majority of models failed to predict the current “pause”, and are unable to correlate with past climate. Most of the prognostications fail. Remember how were were supposed to have more and bigger hurricanes? And the Arctic was to be ice free this year? And snow would be a thing of the past?

Read: NY Times: Climate Models Have Problems »

Shutdown Theater: Obama Takes Down Visitor Logs

Not that they’ve been completely transparent on those to start with

(Daily Caller) The White House has taken down online White House visitor logs and blamed Congress.

The logs, which were posted beginning in December 2009 “as part of President Obama’s commitment to government transparency,” are the latest victims of a partial government shutdown that has temporarily idled 17 percent of the federal workforce.

“Due to Congress’s failure to pass legislation to fund the government, the information on this web site may not be up to date. Some submissions may not be processed, and we may not be able to respond to your inquiries,” reads the index page for the visitor logs. (snip)

This is also one of many cases in which the shutdown has been cited as a reason to disappear information that is potentially embarrassing to the administration. The Bureau of Labor Statistics quickly deep-sixed its September unemployment statistics as other employment proxies indicated the work situation has worsened once again. The Department of Agriculture has buried its September food stamps statistics which are also expected to show increased poverty, dependency and economic regression under Obama.

In a related article, IRS official Sarah Hall Ingram, currently being grilled (again) over IRS problems, visited the Spite House 165 times, 155 with top aids. Which is probably more than Republicans have visited. And possibly more than even elected Democrats.

Read: Shutdown Theater: Obama Takes Down Visitor Logs »

Only 51K Complete “Affordable” Care Act Applications

That’s out of tens of millions of web-hits. They had over 3 years to plan for this. $634 million spent on setting up the federal ACA website. $313 million to set up the website for “Covered California”. Huge sums to set up the ExchangeFails in the other states that are participating. Yet…

(UK Dailymail) Just 51,000 people completed Obamacare applications during the first week the Healthcare.gov website was online, according to two sources inside the Department of Health and Human Services who gave MailOnline an exclusive look at the earliest enrollment numbers.

The career civil servants, who process data inside the agency, confirmed independently that just 6,200 Americans applied for health insurance through the problem-plagued website on October 1, the day it first opened to the public.

Neither HHS nor the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services would comment on the record about the numbers. Enroll America, the president’s organization of health care ‘navigators’ who are charged with helping Americans sign up, didn’t reply to a request for information about its level of success so far.

The White House also did not respond to emails seeking comment.

Now, these are people who completed the applications. This doesn’t mean they actually obtained health insurance. Nor that they are eligible for “subsidies”. If the numbers were super-awesome, we know that Team Obama would be spiking the football left and right. Instead, the obfuscate, give mealy-mouthed responses, and make things up when asked.

BTW, isn’t it funny that we have to find out so much information from the British press regarding the most transparent administration evah!?

Crossed at Right Wing News and Stop The ACLU.

Read: Only 51K Complete “Affordable” Care Act Applications »

Shutdown Theater: No New Beers

With just 17% of the federal government shutdown, one has to wonder if  beer inspectors are considered “non-essential”, and, if so, why we need them in the first place

(USA Today) The federal government shutdown is giving some folks one more reason to cry in their beers: An obscure but powerful arm of the Treasury Department has stopped approving new brews.

All new beers that get bottled or canned to be sold across state lines must be approved by the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau, known in the industry as the TTB. Federal workers must approve the label, as well as the recipe if it uses non-traditional ingredients, which many seasonal beers contain.

While the TTB as stopped approving new recipes and labels, workers there are still collecting brewery taxes.

Got that? No approvals, but still collecting taxes. Kinda like this

(CBS News) Nearly 36,000 employees who work for the Federal Bureau of Prisons across the country have to work during the government shutdown in order to “protect human life and property,” including the ones in Yankton.

“Basically, we are working right now on an IOU for the government, and we have families to support. We have bills to pay, and we’re expected to be here,” American Federation of Government Employees Local 4040 Union President Michele Kunkel said.

But while workers are going without paychecks, inmates at the prison are not.

“There’s a different funding for them,” Kunkel said of the inmates who are getting paid for the jobs they do while in custody.

That’s right: we continue to pay federal prisoners (why we would pay them in the first place is idiotic).

Read: Shutdown Theater: No New Beers »

Golden Loves Guitars

A break from politics and stuff

Read: Golden Loves Guitars »

If All You See…

…is snow that is caused by too much heat, you might just be a Warmist

The blog of the day is Classical Values, with a post on things that don’t make sense.

Read: If All You See… »

Pirate's Cove